One long‐recognized consequence of the tension between popular sovereignty and democratic values like liberty and equality is public opinion backlash, which occurs when individuals recoil in response to some salient event. For decades, scholars have suggested that opinion backlash impedes policy gains by marginalized groups. Public opinion research, however, suggests that widespread attitude change that backlash proponents theorize is likely to be rare. Examining backlash against gays and lesbians using a series of online and natural experiments about marriage equality, and large‐sample survey data, we find no evidence of opinion backlash among the general public, by members of groups predisposed to dislike gays and lesbians, or from those with psychological traits that may predispose them to lash back. The important implication is that groups pursuing rights should not be dissuaded by threats of backlash that will set their movement back in the court of public opinion.

This article broadens our understanding of street‐level governance by examining how citizen performance, organizational publicness, and group bias moderate racial discrimination among street‐level managers (SLMs). We examine this topic with an experiment in which we requested enrollment information from public and charter school principals while randomly assigning a putative student's race and ability. As expected, SLMs discriminated based on race, and positive performance information mitigated this discrimination. Surprisingly, negative performance information also reduced discrimination. Turning to publicness, we find no evidence that less public organizations (charter schools) exacerbated anti‐Black discrimination. Finally, we show that White SLMs discriminated against Black citizens. However, Black SLMs worked in more administratively difficult settings and, perhaps as a result, responded at lower rates; thus, Black citizens were equally likely to receive responses from White and Black SLMs. Therefore, improving access to public agencies may require representativeness and support for SLMs working in challenging organizational environments.

Professors Gibson and Nelson have been generous, thorough, and insightful in their assessment of our book. In highlighting the extent to which elite-led mobilization is

Media and scholastic accounts describe a strong backlash against attempts to advance gay rights. Academic research, however, increasingly raises questions about the sharply negative and enduring opinion change that characterizes backlash among the mass public. How can we reconcile the widespread backlash described by the media with the growing body of academic research that finds no evidence of the opinion change thought to be its hallmark trait? We argue that rather than widespread opinion change, what appears to be backlash against gay rights is more consistent with elite-led mobilization-a reaction by elites seeking to prevent gays and lesbians from achieving full incorporation in the polity. We present evidence from what is widely considered to be a classic case of anti-gay backlash, the 2010 Iowa Judicial Retention Election. Analysis of campaign contribution data in Iowa versus other states between 2010 and 2014, and voter roll-off data exploiting a unique feature of the 2010 retention election supports this argument. The results simultaneously explain how reports of backlash might occur despite increased support for gay rights, and an academic literature that finds no evidence of backlash.

No abstract